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Myths of the Hispanic Vote

December 6, 2011 11:52 amDecember 6, 2011 11:52 am

Not every liberal is publicly chortling over the prospect of facing Newt Gingrich in the general election. According to the Washington Post, some Democratic strategists fear Gingrich’s ability to … win Hispanic voters:

Where Romney, the former business executive and Massachusetts governor, poses a threat in his ability to win independents and conservative Democrats attracted to his image as an economic Mr. Fix-It, Gingrich could pursue a strategy that combines energizing the conservative base and chipping away Democratic support among Hispanics — an electoral formula that helped George W. Bush win in 2004.

… “He does not carry Wall Street baggage,” said one Democratic strategist working on the Obama reelection effort, speaking on the condition of anonymity to freely discuss his thinking. “He’s really smart. He’s definitely authentic.”

Perhaps most significantly, Gingrich has an extensive Hispanic outreach organization, which he has been building for years. Unlike anything in the Romney playbook, that network could give Gingrich a head start slicing into Obama’s base in key states in the Mountain West, where Hispanics are a fast-growing swing voting bloc. Polls show Hispanic voters, two-thirds of whom backed Obama in 2008, still favor the president — but GOP strategists believe that winning 40 percent of that vote could disrupt Obama’s electoral college strategy by putting Colorado, Arizona and Nevada in the Republican column.

I would not be surprised in the slightest if this strategist “speaking on the condition of anonymity” is engaged in an extended exercise in spin, since I find it difficult to imagine that anyone who’s paid for his political advice could actually fear a Gingrich-Obama matchup more than a Romney-Obama matchup. But it’s worth taking this argument seriously for a moment, because it reflects a common misconception about the Hispanic vote: Namely, that it contains a large bloc of voters that can be easily woo’d and won by any Republican who takes a liberal line on immigration, picks a Hispanic running mate, and engages in a little Spanish-language outreach.

In reality, Hispanics are a relatively normalswing constituency: They tilt Democratic overall and then tend to move toward one party or the other in much the same way that the country as a whole does, rather than swinging wildly left or right depending on whether the Republican candidate is willing to whisper the words “comprehensive immigration reform” at the correct frequency. For Hispanics as for most voters, pocketbook issues matter more than identity politics, and a candidate’s overall ideological profile matters more than his positioning on a single issue. (Yes, a Republican who runs a nakedly xenophobic campaign is likely to have a particular problem with Latinos — but then again a nakedly xenophobic campaign is likely to turn off non-Hispanic swing voters as well.) George W. Bush won a larger-than-average share of the Hispanic vote because he campaigned as a center-right figure in general, not because of his particular focus on amnesty for illegal immigrants. John McCain won a smaller-than-average share because the Republican brand was tarnished in 2008 in general, not because the failure of comprehensive immigration reform had poisoned the well with Hispanic voters. And in 2012, there’s no reason to think that a more polarizing candidate like Gingrich will be able to compensate for turning off swing voters by cleaning up among Hispanics: If he can’t win white independents and white conservative Democrats, he probably won’t be able to win Latino independents either.

I haven’t been able to find a lot of polling on Hispanics and the G.O.P. primary field, but here’s one poll that bears this point out. It shows Gingrich with higher name recognition than Romney among Hispanic voters, but weaker approval ratings: Romney gets a 28/25 favorable/unfavorable split, while Gingrich is underwater at 32/36. This probably reflects the fact that even though Romney is to Gingrich’s right on immigration policy, he’s perceived as more centrist overall — and that broad perception matters more than the details of their respective positions on border security and E-Verify and paths to citizenship. There isn’t some clever double-secret “Hispanic path” to winning the White House, in other words. With Latinos as with whites, the more electable candidate is the more electable candidate, regardless of his stance on immigration.

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About

Ross Douthat joined The New York Times as an Op-Ed columnist in April 2009. Previously, he was a senior editor at the Atlantic and a blogger for theatlantic.com. He is the author of "Privilege: Harvard and the Education of the Ruling Class" (Hyperion, 2005) and the co-author, with Reihan Salam, of "Grand New Party: How Republicans Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream" (Doubleday, 2008). He is the film critic for National Review.